Alan Davies – Edinburgh review

Alan Davies is late. Late onstage, because – on the night I watch – he's lingering in his dressing room watching Mo Farah win the 5,000m. And late returning to the fringe, where he hasn't gigged in more than 10 years. But this short Edinburgh run, in advance of a national tour, finds Davies rust-free. He's got a decade's worth of new raw material to explore – parenthood and social media figure prominently – and still has the comedy chops to do them justice. Even so, his brand of blokey, observational standup isn't as fresh as it once was.

Davies meanders around topics as he meanders the stage, ranging widely across his Essex adolescence, cottaging, and the imminent Mayan armageddon. It's all predicated on a larky collusion with the audience – which, happily enough, Davies establishes with ease. There are glimpses of stuff that's personal to him, including a routine about losing control of his bowels at school, which he relates to the trauma of his mother's death when he was six. More often, he keeps things universally recognisable, as with a riff on the differences between technology then (the 1970s) and now. Big laughs are wrung from his middle-aged struggle to learn Facebook etiquette. And online porn makes Davies nostalgic for his own sexual awakening: "no one was ever trafficked against their will into the Freemans catalogue."

The subjects are familiar, and machine-tooled for mass appeal. But Davies doesn't always take the positions you might expect: he heaps scorn on old-school, tough-love parenting, for example. And the detail of his observations (or recollections, in the case of the B&Bs that offer either fruit juice or cereal – but never both – for breakfast) brings hoary content to new life. Shock of the new this isn't – but it's a pleasant surprise that Davies's old magic still works so well.